Assessing the Economic Impact of Sports Facilities on Residential Property Values

Abstract

We estimate the effect of proximity to two sports facilities in Columbus, OH, on residential property values. Results from a spatial hedonic model indicate that the presence of sports facilities in Columbus have a significant, positive, and distance-decaying effect on surrounding residential housing values, supporting the idea that professional sports facilities generate intangible benefits in the local economy. Ordinary least square (OLS) overestimates the hedonic model parameters compared with maximum likelihood and spatial two-stage least squares, suggesting that spatial autocorrelation plays an important role in this setting.